open post: in a slightly hazy lounge

[peaklordshen]

After a few false starts, Shen Qingqiu has found a proper place to test out Crowley's BL pollen vape pen.

He posts up in one of the lounges, close enough to the bar that anyone leaving there might find him. He's still in his braid and loose robes - no one else had noticeably started dressing gayer¹ when they took the stuff, intentional or not, so neither will he. He also brings snacks,² and the next book in the Blood at Dusk series, Moonless Midnight, in case it takes a while to kick in, or a while for anyone to come along to prove it has, anyway. If no one finds him here he will go looking, but roaming the Mansion's halls newly homosexual feels like a much more risky prospect than just staying put and seeing what happens.

He arrays himself on a couch, feet tucked up under him (although this might not be immediately apparent due to the robes), Crowley's pen tucked behind one ear so he can make more notes now that he has a glimmer of a chance that Binghe will forgive him,³ and takes a drag on the vape.

He coughs. It's smoke, not pollen—the blooms must be dried and then burned, like with tobacco—and has an odd, kind of greenish flavor. Not unpleasant, but not pleasant, either. He expected it to taste of, like. Cherry blossom, or something. Pink rather than green. Shit, maybe he is a little homophobic.

He takes another drag, and lets the smoke out of his mouth slowly this time, watching it curl up to the ceiling.

By the time anyone finds him, he will be staring unblinking at the opposite wall, book open on his lap to the third page of the first chapter.

[Threads with Sagramore and Luo Binghe are NSFW.]

¹ Please explain what you mean by this, Shen Qingqiu. I'll wait.
² Crowley did tell him to.
³ After he confirms that the pollen works. And goes to find Binghe. And kisses him. And— well. Maybe. After. He can raise the book club idea again?

Comments

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu stares at his face in a sort of wonder. He does understand. What an amazing thing. So many people hadn't gotten it, when he'd explained in the greenhouse, but Galahad does. It's like they've unlocked a new level of communication, first with the flowers and now with—he laughs. Another kind of flower language.

He feels light and joyful, to be so understood by a beautiful boy, and he reaches out to ruffle Galahad's hair with both hands, drawing him forward to plant a kiss on his forehead, between his eyes.

[peaklordshen]

Bingge must have taken his permission to heart and turned the parasites all the way up, because suddenly Shen Qingqiu's whole body is singing. The glide of Luo Binghe's finger stops feeling like an intrusion and starts feeling the way his tongue in Shen Qingqiu's mouth had, new and perfect and electrifying. When Binghe crooks his finger he gasps, biting at his own lips, chasing Binghe's mouth as it brushes against his own, glancing, not enough. "How—how you tease your poor wife."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu shakes his head. "No, I don't think so?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He laughs -- Shen Qingqiu is very good at making him feel better, though he feels equally buoyed by the power of the remedy Shen Qingqiu gave him -- and leans into the touch. He loves being touched. He's not sure why he's always so afraid of it when it's what he wants. Galahad closes his eyes and enjoys it, Shen Qingqiu's hands in his hair and the kiss and the feeling of being liked.

He feels very much as though he could stay here forever, but eventually he sighs softly and lifts his eyes. "I should go find him. Since you don't know how long it lasts. I promise I'll come back."

[peaklordshen]

For some absolutely absurd reason, this makes Shen Qingqiu tear up. "Yeah," he says. "We are bros." He was so silly for imagining Sagramore might not like his dick. Even if the scum villain's dick is ugly, Sagramore would never say so. He wouldn't break the sacred bonds of bros like that. He's like the guy from the Backstreet Boys' song, and Sagramore is his chorus.

[rememberettersberg]

Where to begin. "It's an old British tradition - a little wooden puppet show, often performed for children at seaside resorts. Mr Punch is an outrageous figure who gets into appalling scrapes but gets his comeuppance at the end."

Nightingale flips to a clean page of his notebook and sketches a quick profile of a leering face with a half-moon shape, chin and nose hooked and jutting, an incongruously jaunty pointy hat topping the whole thing off.

"In the case I've mentioned, an unquiet spirit was using Mr Punch as a sort of avatar representing chaos, upheaval, the jostling anger of a crowd. The people possessed by this spirit had their faces twisted into his visage." He taps on the sketch he drew with his pen. "And when the spirit left them, so did whatever magic held the mangled remains of their faces together."

[protagonisthalo]

At this, Luo Binghe's hips snap forward involuntarily, and he lets out a shaky exhale, fully distracted from the poison. How quickly Shen Qingqiu has gone from hesitant to eager; he would be a fool not to respond in kind. With a whispered apology, he sets his mind to the matter literally at hand and slowly begins to finger Shen Qingqiu loose, kissing him properly as he does so. Luo Binghe is nothing if not an attentive lover, and Shen Qingqiu is clearly dying to be kissed.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu makes a face. "That's disgusting." It reminds him a little of the Skinner Demon, but in reverse - stealing the bodies of people and mutating them into you, rather than mutating yourself into them.

He shifts uncomfortably. For some reason it suddenly feels very wrong that he isn't wearing a guan and he doesn't have his fan. "I didn't kill him," he says. "The original scum villain. I—I don't think I did, anyway."¹ He certainly called for his death many times, online, along with his castration, but—that doesn't mean he'd killed him. The system had just—yoinked Shen Jiu out and yeeted Shen Yuan in. It wasn't intentional.

^{1 Nightingale has very much not implied that he has.}

[untamedantinous]

“I would venture to say it doesn’t need one, it seems to running perfectly well as it is.” There’s a slight shrug.

“I am already dead, I do not think I can die again.”

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qinqgiu lies down on the couch, listening, letting his brain conjure little fantasies against the ceiling of the room above him. At first they're nonspecific, following the mood of the music; the meandering buzzing of bees; the fluttering of curious little songbirds, hopping and weaving between stalks of bamboo. These then morph into sort of loony-tunes caricatures as the song gets more openly comedic, and he huffs a laugh to himself—a fluffy little black dog cavorting with one of the songbirds, who keeps hopping onto his head and fluttering away again into the leaves. Back and forth, back and forth, the dog playfully snapping at the bird, not to harm, just to catch, the bird seeing teeth and fleeing in alarm before being drawn back by inevitable curiosity.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu could explain that Binghe doesn't need to rule the Mansion because the Mansion needs it, he needs to rule it because Binghe needs it, but he gets distracted by the last point.

He'd already touched Enjolras before, he was pretty sure, but he does it again just to be sure—places a hand on his arm and pushes, gently, in case his hand passes through. Nope—solid.

"You still have a body," he says. "If you still have a body, you can definitely die again. I've died, too, and then after I died I got poisoned, and eventually the poison will probably kill me again." He says all of this with a kind of thoughtful detachment.

[involuntaryturncoat]

The song ultimately draws to a close and Asmodean sits back a bit, regarding him. "I am curious as to what you were envisioning there."

[peaklordshen]

Bingge's touch is as sure and as powerful as the ocean, and Shen Qingqiu is being rocked by it, inside and out. He concentrates on exploring Luo Binghe's mouth because it's the only part he has any control over, right now, the rest of his body squirming and shivering without his permission. He brings up a hand to grip Binghe's jaw to keep him close, the tip of his tongue finding the tip of a fang, and how—fucking surreal; Shen Yuan in his first life had had so many opinions about Binghe's fangs, in fanart, had left long comments for artists he commissioned about not making him look too vampiric, but still keeping the suggestion of danger; the importance of including the fangs in art where he was smiling and happy because it made him extra cute.

And now that smiling, fanged, adorable, hot-as-fuck mouth is pressing to his, again and again; now Luo Binghe is working him open on searing, talented fingers. He groans, deep in his throat, and pulls Binghe closer, deeper, a silent demand for more.

[peaklordshen]

For a disorienting second Shen Qingqiu thinks the him in question is Percival, that Galahad had figured out a way to go back home, just briefly, just long enough to be kissed. But then he remembers about Claudius, the ostensible reason for Galahad's imbibing of BL pollen with him.

He sighs. "Alright." He wants to offer to go with him, in case Claudius is not good enough to him in this open and joyful state, but flushes at the idea of being there if he is. Besides, he needs to stay here until Binghe finds him. "Good luck," he says, petting Galahad's head again in farewell.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad smiles beatifically. "Thank you. You're a good friend."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu blinks. "No," he says, "that's in my sleeve." He pulls it out and shows it to Magnus. "I found the plant I was looking for."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu waves a hand at him, embarrassed, and lets him go.

[peaklordshen]

"I don't think laudanum helps with needing to kiss boys, either," says Shen Qinqgiu, though he really doesn't know much about it. It's just a drug people take in movies for headaches as foreshadowing that they're going to die later. Like coughing blood into a handkerchief.

[protagonisthalo]

"You tempt me shamelessly," Luo Binghe huffs. He doesn't want to go too fast and to hurt Shen Qingqiu, but with how responsive Shen Qingqiu is, how animated, it is getting difficult to ignore his own arousal—even rutting against Shen Qingqiu's thigh while he touches him is not enough.

Luo Binghe pulls back to look at him, captivated by the evidence of Shen Qingqiu's desire written across his face—his sweetly pink cheeks and bitten mouth, his eyes half-lidded and hazy with pleasure. He thumbs the corner of Shen Qingqiu's mouth. He has forgotten to guard his heart against this man, or perhaps he's never had that ability at all. There is nothing held back now, no way for him to extract himself from the grip Shen Qingqiu has on him.

He has wanted this so badly. He has stopped trying to escape the mansion, stopped thinking of his wives, stopped caring about Claudius or Janet or whoever else might try to take over. He has cut everything else out and left himself naked and unprotected, just for the slim chance of having this. He has wagered everything on the hope that this will be better.

"If any part of you still does not want me," he says, "tell me now." It's a request for permission to enter Shen Qingqiu, but in saying it, Luo Binghe means far more than that.

[wickedwit]

“You’ve admitted you need to kiss them, at least.” Because of the BL pollen — strange that Claudius would feel need to say such a self-evident thing. He holds out a finger as he expostulates. “It’s so easy to lie to one’s self, and not for any reward or challenge. You don’t even get the satisfaction of having carried off a clever lie, once you catch yourself doing it. Far better to know what you want, even if pursuing it ends in catastrophe … oh, but I’m sure it won’t be such a catastrophe.” Suddenly he’s stricken with fondness for, well, everything, including this strange young man who may be an august cultivator who may be something else entirely from China, and who definitely wants Luo Binghe. “Even if it is, I’ve every faith you can kiss Luo Binghe. I’m sure courting a little catastrophe is worth it for you.”

[peaklordshen]

The faintest of all possible alarm bells rings in the hazy back room of Shen Qingqiu's mind. He wonders if it counts, that he's going to go back to being straight after this—does that mean there is, still, a straight part of him, preserved somewhere in a glass cube, repulsed by the way he's aching, the way he needs to be kissed so he remembers to breathe? He can't imagine it. The pollen is so effective it has erased even the reasons he could imagine a straight man disliking what Luo Binghe is doing to him right now. It's impossible to imagine anyone reacting with anything but complete and total pleasure to the press of Luo Binghe's mouth, the taste of his blood, the feeling of the heavenly pillar thrusting against his thigh.

It doesn't matter what he'll think tomorrow. Right now, in this moment, there is no part of him that does not want Binghe. But he is not so shameless as to ask Binghe to put it inside, even like this. He licks his lips, instead, and looks up at him, letting his silence provide answer and trying to put all his longing into his gaze so he won't have to beg.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Qingqiu rankles at his, a little. How'd they end up back on Binghe when they'd been talking about Pokemon? He'd much rather talk to Claudius about Pokemon than about Binghe. How many times is he going to come complaining to Shen Qingqiu about being a jilted wife??¹ Sorry, man, it's Shen Qingqiu's arc right now. Come back in a few weeks for your scene where you call Binghe out in a jealous rage, and then he backs you against a wall, towering and beautiful, and then you have hate-sex, which would have been hotter, by the way, if you hadn't gotten him to take the parasites out.

You have to do a different arc between the jilting and the making up. It's like Claudius has never read a serialized wife-collecting novel in his life. Which, right, he hasn't. Because he's a lion from Lion King. Or whatever. What had they been talking about? Oh, right. "It won't be catastrophe," he says. "Some of us know how to treat Binghe the way he deserves."

¹ Yes, that's exactly what's going on right now.

[protagonisthalo]

Luckily for Shen Qingqiu, Luo Binghe knows exactly what it means when a blushing virgin gives him that look. Relief and affection rush through him so powerfully that he simply has to kiss Shen Qingqiu one more time before answering his silent plea.

He reaches for the pot of salve, so aflame with passion that he lingers over applying it, groaning at his own touch. He increases the activity of his blood parasites, forcing the necessary muscles to relax, then takes himself in hand and slowly pushes in. He's done his best to ready Shen Qingqiu, but it's still a tight fit; he scrambles for the salve and smears it more generously over the shaft, murmuring nonsense the whole time about how beautiful Shen Qingqiu is, how much Luo Binghe likes it and likes him.

[wickedwit]

"Ay, ay." Claudius laughs appreciatively, because he is still so, so fond, and sure that whatever problems he caused with Luo Binghe are problems Shen Qingqiu's willingly taken on. He wouldn't be here talking about kissing boys otherwise. Claudius also just stopped caring. "Galahad deserves a type other than melancholic," he says. (That's what he was thinking when he stopped caring.) "What other types?"

[peaklordshen]

"Oh, Galahad is grass and fire," says Shen Qingqiu immediately. "Specifically, like, Cherrim. You know? Closed up tight until he sees the sun, and then he's sunlight himself."